The Right Help and the Wrong Help.
“Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it”
Baz Luhrmann
We constantly get asked why don’t we promote ourselves more. We are always very careful how we promote mental health training and how it should be promoted. So we decided to write a blog and outline what we do and how we do it. We sit quietly until people ask us a question, we don’t really go out and dictate what people should and shouldn’t do when dealing with mental health, there are guidelines of course of best practice but we stay within the parameters of best mental health practices. This is a blog outlining what we do and how we do it, not to advertise but to outline what is best and what is not best practice.
Quality Assurance
FTI wellbeing and training limited affiliate with professional bodies to ensure quality assurance. We are a QNUK and Highfield approved centre. This means that we have a standard of training that will need to be met on an ongoing basis. It’s similar to the Board Bia quality, you might buy Irish meat with the Board Bia mark as you know the quality is there, and FTI wellbeing and training is no different.
We have a requirement of training to maintain, and quality assurance to meet, this means for any customer who attends accredited mental health training there is a continuous and professional standard. In other words, a McDonald’s burger should have the same quality in Ireland as it does in America. There is an expectation required from the trainers we use to ensure they are sticking to a standard of quality in line with best practice, this is checked by an external assessor. We need to be open and transparent to all quality checks, meaning that an external assessor can check the quality to ensure a high standard of training is met.
Experience
We use Counsellors and Psychotherapists to conduct any Mental Health Training. We do this to make sure that the correct message is getting across. This is something we really emphasise, as if the wrong advice or guidance is given, it can be detrimental to supporting mental health. For instance, there are a few areas individuals need to be aware of when supporting mental health, such as creating a victim mentality, the empathy trap (specifically for the workplace) and rescue fantasies. If these attributes are not focused or developed with the candidates in training, it can lead to more problems in the community and in the workplace.
Working with a client is hard and personally challenging, you have to get to know them, build a reliable and working relationship. Having the patience and understanding to look at the world from their perspective and feeling their thoughts, feelings and understanding their behaviours can be a very dark place for a counsellor. We hire counsellors because if a counsellor can share one tenth of their experience with individuals on a course this is a healthy step forward.
Outcome
If people are trained wrong and start discussing mental health incorrectly then it will usually create more problems than solutions. We need much much more than just for instance compassion or understanding. While these are important skills, they won’t get you far when it comes to the need for someone to take medication regularly when they have bipolar disorder. If we followed this train of thought having compassion for situations like supporting someone with Bipolar will not get you far, you need firmness, honesty, and sometimes brutal honesty, to help the person correctly.
The wrong help
We have seen many people over the years, including qualified Counsellors, give outstandingly bad support by just using compassion alone. Giving the right help is a skill and not a philosophy. If we approach mental health with only the loveliness of compassion and caring, we are at risk of not supporting effectively. Mental health needs understanding, caring and compassion but if these are not channelled in the right way, complemented by a skill set we will do more harm than good. So, remember “Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it” . Baz Luhrmann.